UK Trains Take WiFi Route To Connectivity

Randy Sparks writes "The BBC is reporting that one of the UK's largest train operators, GNER, is to offer Wi-Fi net access on its trains. What's interesting is how this net connection will be achieved - by a combination of networks provided by multiple mobile phone connections or even digital TV Internet, provided from ground stations the train passes by. It'll cost UKP4.95 per hour for train goers, although First Class Travellers will get it free..."

Comments

Oblig Jokes

[beacher]

Quake players and their rail guns...
Tunnelling
Rail driving?
Say, didn't you just hit a badger? There goes our proxy server!

Re:Oblig Jokes

[Zocalo]

How on Earth could you have missed "Train hotspotting"? ;)

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now when sitting in a three hour delay you can at least do some browsing.

mmorpg addicts dreams are coming true!

[sh2kwave]

Finally it seems i will be able to achieve my goals of playing my mmorpg charectors no matter where i go.

I can see it now "sorry sir you cant take that see i need it for my 3rd laptop which has my cleric on it, plz leave me along the mobs gonna spawn soon"

Cool, Spammers now have rolling hide outs :)

[Wacky_Wookie]

Why not buy up a whole carriages worth of space and set up your office on a train going between say, Bristol and london, or Manchester? Sure beats sitting in an office all day. If you worked the shifts out correctly, your staff would have a choice between living in two citys (or any stop in between).

Of course that bring up the obvious joke:
In Soviet Russia, the office commutes to YOU!

I think the view from a moving train would be much nicer then a static office window anyday!

A whole new spectrum of excuses

[JosKarith]

"We're sorry this train is late, but there are the wrong type of interleaves on the pipe..."
(For the benefit of those who don't have the pleasure of living in the wettest place on earth British Railways used 'Wrong leaves on the track' as an excuse for late/cancelled trains for years...)

Re:A whole new spectrum of excuses

[AGMW]

... and shortly after the "leaves on the track" incident, there was a case down in Kent somewhere where some guys had robbed a sub-post office and been chased onto the tracks by the police. The announcement came of the tannoy ...

"We apologies for the late running of the 07:25 service to London Bridge. This is due to thieves on the line."

Laugh! I nearly got to work on time.

Re:A whole new spectrum of excuses

[NickFitz]

Some years ago, I was on a train whose conductor explained in great detail why we were going to sit at Nuneaton for an hour, finishing with:

"Once again, we apologise for this delay, which is due solely to the incompetence of the driver."

Thames Trains Reading to Paddington has this

[mccalli]

Can confirm that I've noticed testing going on for this. On my morning commute from Maidenhead station into Paddington (on the Reading route) my Powerbook has been picking up a wireless network called 'TEST' for a few months now.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:This seems better than GPRS

[s7uar7]

Rather like our UK trains then.

Re:Through the rails or over the power lines?

[Timo_UK]

So they took the bike from in front of the station (because it might contain a bomb) and put it on a train instead? Very clever ;-))

Wardriiving, the cheaper way to go

[Skevin]

I started thinking about how the railway could save money...

"Ladies and Gentlemen using our wire internet service: this is your conductor speaking, and I would like to inform you than in approximately five seconds, you will need to change your wireless settings - essid is 'linksys', channel 7, IP range is-... Oh, bugger! It appears we are entering the range of another access point, so let me consult our wardriving records... Here we are: essid is 'elizabeth', channel 11, and-... oh dear, we've just left the range of *that* access point as well. In any case, the farmhouse we are currently passing has the following settings..."

Solomon Chang

Pah! IP over trains protocol is the way to go

[91degrees]

You'll get much better bandwidth if you simply take the data by train. Even with the delays inherent in English rail.

Re:Through the rails or over the power lines?

[Orlando]

or send the traffic through the rails

You obviously don't live in England. The rail infrastructure is so bad they have enough problems getting the trains to run on the rails let alone network traffic.

Fave Excuse

[pklong]

My favorate excuse heard on the british train system for delayed trains is "exploding pigeons".

Apparently London Kingscross Thameslink stations overhead lines are very close to the roof and a pigeon flying between the roof and the lines can shorten the gap just enough for the electricity to arc across the gap.

Noooooo!

[empaler]

Now they can actually make money by being late! The horror! Now they have incentive!